Skate Early Access

If I said there weren’t times while playing the new early access Skate when I found myself hooked on clearing a task or engaged in executing an impromptu line I’d challenged myself to make, I’d be lying. Thanks in large part to its smooth controls, it is true that cruising around in Skate does have the capacity to tickle the dusty part of my brain that still delights in booting up Skate 2 every now and then, just to turn back the clock, noodle around, and unwind. However, these moments are fleeting. Skate is just so aggressively different in tone, style, and spirit from its ancestors that any brief trance I found myself in was constantly broken by its embarrassing dialogue, trite art style, and sterile, mobile game-style progression. Arming Skate with a faithful facsimile of the incredible feel of the old games means little if the rest of it is constantly turning me off. Unfortunately, Skate is so fundamentally irritating and unsatisfying in every other way that there is currently just no appeal here whatsoever for me to play this over any of the originals, old and creaky as they may be. I don’t know what Skate will look like in 12 months time, or when it’s no longer in early access, but it’s left a horrible first impression. The Fortnitification of Skate may well be the most disappointing thing to happen to skate culture since razor scooters.